Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 20 June 1912, Page 21

Current Topics

A Coming Jubilee Under the ancient Jewish law it was only every fiftieth year that was a year of jubilee. In later times, how-. ever, both Church usage and social custom have favored ' the increase of jubilees; and last century-the century of centenarieswitnessed a marked tendency, which still persists, to find divisions of time or life-incidents on which to fasten fresh and ever more fresh jubilee celebrations. The silver jubilee (twenty-five years) has long been an established fact and ten-year periods both under and over the golden fifty-bronze, iron, copper, pearl, and numerous other jubileesare struggling for a measure of public recognition. It is, in effect ,a search for fresh landmarks in our lives. It is as if people would gild and label and ticket all the chief rungs in the ladder of life—as if they would at stated times lift us gently and lovingly on the higher steps as upon so many successive thrones, and bedeck us with wreathing smiles and friendly hand-clasps and heart-loads of good wishes, and with every manifestation of that affection and good-will which constitute the sweetest natural charm of life. * It is in this cordial and kindly spirit that the citizens of Christchurch Catholic and non-Catholic—-will assemble next week to do honor to his Lordship Bishop Grimes, the Catholic Bishop of the diocese. The memorable jubilee commemorated in Wellington the other day was unique in that it was the first archiepiscopal jubilee in the history of the Church in New Zealand — Christchurch celebrations will be unique in that the occasion is at once the jubilee of the Bishop . and of the Diocese. Of the personality of the beloved Bishop, of his hold on the hearts of his people, of his place in popular esteem and in the public life of the community, and of the tremendous work he has accomplished for God and the Church during his arduous episcopate we shall have a further opportunity of speaking. For the present our purpose is merely to record that the preparations in connection with the celebrations are being taken up with an energy and enthusiasm , commensurate with the occasion, and that the public reception to be tendered to Dr. Grimes on Wednesday next promises to be the biggest and most representative function of its kind ever held in Christchurch. Our Christchurch readers, and intending visitors, will find full particulars as to tickets, etc., in our advertising columns. Dr. Cleary and the Education Commission At the close of his evidence before the Education Commission —a full report of which appeared in our last issue—Dr. Cleary, who had been listened to with the greatest attention, was thanked and complimented by the chairman and other members of the Commission; and was assured that his ‘ very valuable and interesting evidence would be forwarded to the proper quarter.’ Our description of Dr. Cleary’s evidence as ‘ a telling and weighty presentment of the Catholic case,’ has been heartily endorsed in Catholic circles; and his Lordship’s clear, concise, and cogent statement has elicited favorable comment, and even warm approval, in . other quarters where one would hardly have expected i . it. The Auckland Farmers’ Weekly, for example, of June 12, says that the Education Commission’s inquiries are eliciting very little that was not already known to the authorities, but it incidentally afforded Dr. Cleary, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland, a further opportunity of placing on record the views of his Church on educational questions. We do not remember to have read a clearer or more dispassionate - statement of the position than that placed before the Commission by Dr. Cleary.’ The Farmer’s Weekly then proceeds to quote at considerable length those portions of Bishop Cleary’s evidence which showed the religious dogmatism of our secular system and the grave injustice which it inflicts upon the consciences and the

purses of dissidents from the State-school creed. . ‘ Many of. us,’ it adds, ‘ who do not necessarily agree with Dr. Cleary’s religious views and profession are heartily at one with him in the belief that no education can be regarded, as complete that omits to find a place for religion in the instruction of the child.’ And our northern contemporary quotes with approval the concluding parts of Dr. Cleary’s evidence, which, as our readers will recall, is a strong and unanswerable plea for the old, immemorial and essential union of religion in any scheme of education properly so called. The Large Family League The following is a description of the programme and recent proceedings of a significant league which has lately been formed in France: ‘ The Large Family League, which has been formed to prevent the depopulation of France, held a demonstration in Paris on Monday. They assembled on the Esplanade des Invalides, and there were delegates from Paris and the Provinces. Captain Maire presided, and addresses were delivered by MM. Denvys Cochin, Leroy Beaulieu, and others, including several deputies. A delegation was appointed to wait on the Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the meeting the bands played Au Drapeau,” and then to the sounds of the “ Marseillaise,” a procession marched to the Foreign Office, a large number of children walking in front. The Foreign Minister received them, and the President of the Conseil, M. Poincare, delivered a congratulatory address. The League demands that a. grant or an abatement of taxes be allowed for the fourth and every subsequent child born to each family; that the size of the family be taken into account in the promotion of officials of the State and of the local government departments; that the law of 19th January, 1805, which allowed the father to bring up and educate one of his children at the cost of the State, be revived : that in public examinations a special examination be held for children of families that are six in number ; that scholarships be awarded to children of large families ; that the State look after the housing of large families; that plural voting be given to the fathers of large families. The President of the Conseil approved of many of the recommendations, and said that there was one, a remission of taxes in the case of large families, that it might be possible to concede immediately.’ •KThe efforts of this interesting League, however well-meant, can, of course, at best but touch the fringe of the problem. As we pointed out last week, the only cure for race suicide, in France or anywhere else, is a return to the principles .of Christianity. As the New York Freeman’s Journal aptly remarks, the Catholic Church is ‘the best Large Family League.’ The Collecting Fraud Most of our clergy, and many of the business men amongst our laity, have had experience of the voluble visitor from the East, who, with glib tongue, and patriarchal presence, and graceful gesture comes soliciting alms. If he is quite sure that you belong to the Catholic Church, he, too, is a - Roman Catholique ’ ; but if he finds that his victim professes one of the numerous brands of Protestantism the wily collector announces himself as ‘ Catholique, but not Roman Catholique.’ This is a trump card to play with our friends the High Anglicans, and usually elicits a handsome response. Sometimes the enterprising Eastern professes to be returning to his (purely mythical) monastery, and is in need of funds for the journey; but more often it is a college, or orphanage, or his own desolate and impoverished ‘mission,’ ravaged by the Turks, which is put forward as a claim on the charity of the guileless listener. He has no lack of documents and recommendations—which he knows the average Western is not in the least likely to be able to decipher—and removes the last vestige of doubt from the mind of his prospective benefactor by the length and impressiveness of the ecclesiastical titles which he parades. This type of Eastern * Catholic ’ is, happily,. only a very occasional visitant to the Antipodes; but in Europe and

America he is frequently met with, and our American contemporaries, in particular, contain, from time to time, characteristically outspoken denunciations of specific cases of the kind. The nuisance has become so great that, in response to numerous applications, the Holy See, in an interesting document from Propaganda dated January 1, 1912, has confirmed previous regulations— had fallen somewhat into desuetudeand has issued some important new provisions on the subject. * After describing in detail the ways of these 4 Catholics’who are not only schismatics but often absolute infidels after pointing out how by their unscrupulous methods 4 the good faith and piety of Catholics is taken in and imposed upon, discredit is brought upon the peoples and churches of the East, justice is violated, and the Catholic name suffers serious injury,’ the document lays down four fresh provisions which will be of interest to both clergy and laity, and which we translate herewith : (1) Let Ordinaries admit into their dioceses no Eastern collector of funds, of whatever Order or ecclesiastical dignity, even if he exhibits authentic documents in whatever form expressed and duly sealed, unless he furnishes an authentic and recent Rescript of this Sacred Congregation (of Propaganda), in which faculty is given him, both of leaving his own diocese and of collecting alms. (2) But if, notwithstanding these injunctions of the Apostolic See, any Eastern ecclesiastical person, even if fortified with letters of recommendation from his own Prelate, shall travel through Europe, America, or other countries for the purpose of collecting alms,, let the Ordinary of the place in which he appears, warn him of the prohibition against mendicancy, and not permit him to celebrate Mass or to exercise the other ecclesiastical offices. 1 (3) But if he shows himself obstinate, let the Ordinary, even through the public press, warn the clergy and the faithful that this method of obtaining money is to be regarded as unlawful and condemned. (4) Finally, if any doubt arises, let Ordinaries refer the matter to this Sacred Congregation which will make fitting provision in the case. An Orange Discourse The Orange orator nowadays is not taken at all seriously by any of the people who count, and he does not cut any sort of influential figure in the community. He represents neither the learning nor the intellect nor the culture of Protestantism, but stands always and ever for noise and narrowness. His appeal is at all times to ignorance and bigotry, to passion and prejudice. He is found always as the promoter of ill-feel-ing, and as the stirrer up of strife. The infinitesimal influence which he does possess is wholly mischievous, and the part he plays is in flat violation of all the canons of good citizenship. The Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1835 to inquire into Orangeism in Great Britain and the colonies, in their Report to Parliament (p. xxvi.), expressed themselves as 4 anxiously desirous, of seeing the United Kingdom and the colonies of the Empire freed from the baneful and un-Christian influence of the Orange societies.’ ‘ The obvious tendency and effect of the Orange institution,’ continued the Report, 4 is, to keep up an exclusive association in civil and military society, exciting one portion of the people against the other ; to increase the rancor and animosity too often unfortunately existing between persons of different religious persuasions to make the Protestant the enemy of the Catholic, and the Catholic the enemy of the Protestant.’ The truth of this official utterance has long been realised by the New Zealand public; and that is why, amongst the intelligent and thinking portion of the community, the Orange orator is a negligible quantity. New Zealanders have no time for : the bigot and the strifemonger. And this general attitude of the public is for the most part reflected in the press. The more influential and reputable dailies have learned to appraise the Orange declaimer at his true value, and his deliverances are now for the most part relegated to the back-block columns, or dismissed with the most inconspicuous and briefest possible par,

He still occasionally, however, finds a friend among the journalistic lesser lights. The Westport News of June 1, for / example— which has been forwarded to us by a correspondent—grants the hospitality of its columns to a somewhat lengthy report of an Orange lecture delivered by the Rev. W. Little, Grand Chaplain of the L.O.L, The ostensible subject of the lecture was ‘ The British Empire and the Dangers that Assail it ’; the real object of the address was, of course, to attack the Catholic Church. Behind the yellow peril and the German menace, the orator, overtaken by a sort of intellectual jim-jams,' sees ‘ the black peril, or the endeavor on the part of the Church of Rome to destroy the Empire ’ ; and in the attempt to give color to his fantasy he delivers himself of the usual rhodomontade which does duty as Orange ‘ argument.’ The ‘ arguments’ are all of equal worthlessness, and any one sample will serve as a specimen of the rest. We take the first in order in Bro. Little’s oration. It takes the form of a hackneyed and much-travelled 1 quotation ’ from Cardinal Manning—a quotation which has done duty on many an Orange platform, which has been handed round from one Orange orator to another, and which not one of the glib declaimers has ever taken the trouble to verify. We have before us three Orange versions of this ‘ quotation,’ and not one of them agrees with either of the others. Here is the latest Westport version, as per Bro. Little. Cardinal Manning is quoted as saying: ‘ England is the head of Protestantism, the centre of its movements, and the stronghold of its power. Weakened in England, it is paralysed everywhere; conquered in England, it is conquered throughout the world; once overthrown here, all else is but a warfare of detail.’ 4 The purpose of Rome is to subjugate and subdue, to conquer and rule an Imperial race.’ * Regarding this 4 quotation ’ we have to observe: (1) No reference is given as to where this quotation * is to be found, or as to when or where the words were uttered. (2) The ‘quotation ’ is hopelessly garbled and mutilated, and words are put into Manning’s mouth which he never uttered. (3) Even as given, there is not in the * quotation ’ one ' word or breath or syllable about the Empire, much less about destroying it. Manning was an Englishman and a loyalist through and through. At the time when he was supposed to have uttered the above ‘ quotation ’ Manning was not a Cardinal, and had only been a very few years a Catholic. Nearly twenty years later the Cardinal wrote: My desire and my duty, as an Englishman, as a Catholic, and as a pastor, is to claim for my flock and for myself a civil allegiance as true and as loyal as is rendered by any subject of the British Empire.’ (4) As there are types of intellect which are either unwilling to acknowledge or unable to recognise that words may be used in a figurative sense, we may point out that in any references made by Manning to subduing the prejudices of Englishmen in regard to the Catholic faith, a purely spiritual conquest by the peaceful preaching of the Gospel is obviously meant. When the 4 Men and Religion ’ movement sets out to 4 conquer ’ the United States no one in his senses supposes that they have designs on the Government of the Republic; when Protestant missionaries speak they have done—‘subduing’ China to the yoke of the Gospel, or of wrenching back Arabia from Satan, no one supposes that they mean anything but a peaceful propaganda of one of the various forms of the Protestant faith; when Knox made the thrice-uttered prayer—if he did ,in fact, so pray as alleged— 4 Give me Scotland, or I die,.’ Orangemen would probably agree that it was a purely spiritual aspiration. Yet when a Catholic priest or bishop uses similar rhetorical or figurative language these one-eyed zealots can see in it nothing but an indication of an attempt to * destroy the Empire.’ Truly your Orange orator has a sublime capacity for making himself ridiculous. * The lecturer’s remaining references to the Catholic Church are of the like texture with the foregoing and consist ; entirely of distortions, misquotations, and gross

misrepresentations. This whole talk about destroying the Empire comes with very bad grace from the representative of an organisation which at this very moment is preaching sedition, threatening to defy his Majesty's Government, and proclaiming its intention to ‘ line the last ditch’ against the forces of the Crown., We have referred to the address because our correspondent has asked us to do so, but certainly not because, on its merits, it was entitled to the least attention. One — and only one aspect of the meeting is deserving of any notice; and that is the fact that the Deputy-Mayor was in the chair. In view of the invariable practice of the Mayors of our large cities to refuse to have anything whatever to do with meetings at which the religious beliefs .of any section of the community are attacked, the Catholic ratepayers and citizens of Westport are entitled to ask Councillor Lange for an explanation.